


Poker Night With The Boys

by Redbone135



Category: The Boys (TV 2019)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28634382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redbone135/pseuds/Redbone135
Summary: Just 'The Boys' being happy after season two and playing poker together. Very loosely based off a panel from the original comics. Very small Frenchie x Kimiko moment at the end.  (Billy Butcher is in it, so obviously it's T for language)
Relationships: The Female | Kimiko Miyashiro/The Frenchman
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Poker Night With The Boys

They don’t see each other very much anymore, and it is the kind of thing that their old selves would have felt bad for. A disbanding of brothers – an end of an era. But unlike last time, they hadn’t gone their separate ways in fermenting hatred and resentment – they had simply settled into different, happier lives. If things had to change, well, then this was the best way for them to.

Still, it was sad to lose such fraternal comradery, and though Frenchie truly believed there was no good in mourning alone and M.M. missed his second family like a lost limb, they bit the bullet and adjusted to their new roles with a quiet dignity, neither one wanting to admit the loneliness they felt while surrounded by family that wasn’t… their boys.

In the end it was Billy Butcher who tracked them all down – and none of them were sure why they were surprised. Of course it was Billy Butcher who brought them back together – but not in the way they’d expected. Not in the least.

“Butcher – I can’t do this again,” M.M. had sighed into the phone – knowing full well he would do whatever ‘this’ was again.

“ _Mon ami_ , I wish I could help, but I really don’t want to,” Frenchie had grumbled on the other line – not wanting to admit how relieved he was to hear the other two alive and well.

“I feel obligated to warn you all, this line is definitely being monitored,” Hughie cut in, his voice less nervous than it had been when they’d parted ways.

“Nah, it’s nothin’ like that,” Billy had said, still characteristically cryptic. “I jus’ figured since you cunts seem so determined to be normal let’s… let’s do something normal. Poker night, just the boys.”

They all pretended to be too busy. Janine’s got a play recital. Culinary school goes late a lot of nights. Balancing Neuman and The Seven’s schedules was difficult enough. They all made excuses.

“I might be able to do the 14th?” M.M. finally conceded.

The 14th sounded good. They all cleared their schedules.

Now, standing outside the little house with the white picket fence protecting a bed of pink and purple geraniums, holding a bottle of vodka in each hand, Frenchie couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t a bad idea. If they weren’t all components of an unstable and volatile concoction, destined to attract trouble like a magnet when put together. But he’s also too happy to see his friends to turn back now.

The doorbell rings and it is not even two seconds before the front door is ripped open and M.M. is standing there, six feet of glee, trying to pretend he isn’t thrilled to see the little Frenchman.

Frenchie – never one for pretending – embraces his friend quickly and with force, the vodka bottles clinking together as he wraps his arm’s around the man in front of him.

“It is a nice place you have here,” he says as he pulls away, gesturing around the little house. “Very tranquil, domestic… how you say… _etouffant_?”

“I have no idea what that means, but I’ll take it as a compliment,” M.M. answers back, beckoning him inside nervously, not sure how neatly his old life will fit into the new one. “Uh… Frenchie… what is she doing here?”

Frenchie grins as Kimiko follows him inside. He doesn’t answer right away, instead making himself at home at the little bar off the side of the kitchen and beginning to dig out glasses and other things to begin mixing a tray of drinks – five drinks – one more than M.M. had been anticipating.

“She will be no trouble,” Frenchie finally assures him, pausing in his mixing to ask if Monique would like one.

“Um… no… she and Janine are upstairs watching a movie… Frenchie, I get it, but I’ve got Janine here… No supes in the house sort of a deal.”

Frenchie lowers his voice to a whisper – though it is useless, he knows, because Kimiko seems to be able to hear even the slightest noise through six inches of concrete – it has made their tiny apartment a challenge to navigate for sure - never before has he had to be so careful with his secrets.

“She does not want to be alone tonight… Please, she will just sit and watch TV.”

It still baffles him, the relationship he has built with her over the past year. Complicated in a way only one of Frenchie’s relationships could be. He had thought it would be easier, with only one other person to mind, but the strange bond between them seemed to shift every day to something new and unknowable and quite frankly exhausting. Some days he woke up half mad with hormones, desperate to touch her in ways she wouldn’t yet permit – and ‘yet’ was being optimistic. Other days he caught her gaze across their apartment and something soft and fragile filled the space between them, filling Frenchie with understanding as to why Billy had gone rabid over Becca’s loss. And some days, like tonight when she took his hand and signed – insistently and a little impatient – that she did not want to be alone, he felt something akin to how M.M. must look at his daughter, his own needs tossed aside without a second thought to make sure hers were not just met but exceeded. Sometimes he flew through the full gambit in just a couple hours, and it was a lot of work to not let his own moods shift with it. But he wouldn’t trade it – not for a million lovers – not to absolve a million sins.

M.M. didn’t really have time to respond before Kimiko was settling in and flipping through the channels of his living room TV – pausing on a couple of Janine’s cartoons and then drawing her knees up to her chest to watch the characters sing and dance cheerfully.

“We don’t have cable, so this is a real treat for her,” Frenchie adds, smacking M.M. on the shoulder and out of his dazed surprise at her docility and turning back to the tray of drinks at hand.

Hughie arrives next, rushed apologies as he shrugs out of his coat, setting down a bodega bag full of chips and pretzels and greeting M.M. was a casual pat to the back – accepting Frenchie’s kiss on the cheek a little hesitantly as he is offered a cocktail and a seat at the dining room table.

Billy is of curse the last to arrive. He has no greeting for the other three, no questions about what they’ve all been up to. He takes his drink, lights his cigarette which he passes to Frenchie despite M.M.’s protests, and kicks his boots up on the table as he digs a couple decks of cards out of his coat pockets and begins to shuffle.

He is quiet as they deal the first couple rounds, only passively listening to their stories of domestic lives and budding careers – Frenchie has started culinary school in the hopes of opening his own restaurant/money laundering business, Hughie is loving politics and it’s potential to help shape the world for the better, M.M. has accepted a coaching position at a local high school for ‘at risk’ boys – a step up from his last job to be sure. Butcher begins offering jokes as tidbits of their love lives start to peek through – couples therapy with Monique, the strange Christmas Hughie had introducing his father to Annie’s mother, everything about the way Frenchie’s eyes keep darting back over to the living room.

“Oi’, mate, I think I’ve looked at your cards more than you have tonight,” he tells Frenchie, who is once again watching Kimiko laugh at the cartoons in the next room.

After the third round, and as many drinks, Kimiko slams a hand down on the little table next to the couch, drawing their attention as three grown men all clench in fear. But Frenchie only laughs as she begins to gesture frantically at the TV, a set of nerf machine guns being advertised. Without making excuses, he stands from the table and makes his way into the living room, grabbing a bottle of vodka from the bar and refilling her drink as he leans against the back of the couch, letting his hands fall softly on her shoulders, kneading lightly like a cat stretching its paws.

“You want that, _mon coeur_?” he chuckles, watching her hands fly in animated gestures, tucking her knees underneath her as she bounces her body with her attention between him and the TV.

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to be so loud,” he jokes, settling her hands with his own. “Maybe next payday we’ll get a set. But I warn you, I won’t go easy on you.”

She just smirks, swatting at his shoulders as he saunters back over to the boys.

“Frenchie…” Hughie trails off, not sure what to say. He is realizing for the first time tonight that he hasn’t seen the little man break his grin once. Of all of them, domestic life seems to be suiting Frenchie the best.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” M.M. says and it is clear that’s a compliment.

“Yeah, does she keep your balls in a jar above the bleedin’ fireplace, or just throw ‘em out completely,” Butcher joins in as he begins to deal the next round.

Frenchie makes a rude gesture across the table, all in good fun, and they settle back into a kind of comfort they didn’t know could exist under these circumstances. A brotherhood formed in panicked survival; it is strange to see the starving little plant of a friendship actually blossom in such happy circumstances. But they throw back a few more drinks, and share a few more laughs, and even though Billy still refuses to talk about his life and it’s going-ons – dodging their questions like bullets and lawsuits – he does seem less tense at the table. Happy almost. Well, happy for Billy.

And it isn’t long after their eighth or ninth drinks – they’ve lost track because Frenchie refills them too quickly to keep track – that Frenchie loses a round and jokingly removes his shirt.

“Put it back on,” M.M. groans. “No one wants to see that.”

“Why stop at your shirt?” Hughie slurs- his tolerance for alcohol having started at practically pathetic and only declined over the past year. “Take it off! Take it off!”

“What do you say, lads?” Billy chuckles, his deep rumble of a laugh. “First cunt to lose his knickers hosts the next night?”

And they are all so eager to meet again next month that no one declines the challenge.

It is well past midnight, Billy’s shoes and socks sitting in a pile with Hughie’s flannel and everything M.M. owns next to the table when Frenchie sets about dealing what they all know is the last round. M.M. is, after all, down to his boxers – which is fine because they all knew he would be hosting the next poker night anyway.

Frenchie feels a light tap on his shoulder and looks up, Kimiko standing over him, looking insistently at the cards. No need for signs, he knows what she wants. He deals her in.

“Hey now!” M.M. protests. “You said she was just going to watch TV all night!”

“What’s wrong,” Hughie laughs. “Afraid to get naked in front of a woman who isn’t your wife? Are you really that old already?”

Kimiko cocks her head in agreement, settling into the chair next to Frenchie’s and looking over the cards in her hand.

It is Billy who settles the debate.

“Alright Scary Spice, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Turns out M.M. _could_ be worse. He could be Kimiko, who called every raise despite what she was holding, showed her cards when she got excited, and seemed to have the worst luck when it came to face cards. They gave her a few practice rounds before Billy leaned across the table with what Frenchie thought looked a little too much like a leer and announced, “All right then, chatterbox, you’ve got to take somthin’ off now.”

Kimiko’s eyes widened, looking around the table panicked. They settled on Frenchie.

Her eyes screamed “help”, but her hands lay flat on the table, too proud to actually ask for it.

He thinks for a moment, then leans down and picks up M.M.’s oversized Run DMC t-shirt, offering it to her. She takes a moment and then shrugs into it, looking like a doll in human clothing.

“Reverse strip poker!” he announces to the table.

“Those ain’t the rules,” Billy growls.

“Well… I am changing the rules,” Frenchie growls back with equal ferocity.

“It’s fine,” M.M. cuts in to defuse the tension. “We can change the rules for… Kimiko.”

It is the first time tonight M.M. has used her name, and it’s almost affectionate. It is a consolation for Frenchie, a warning for Butcher.

Billy is unhappy about it at first, but they settle into the rhythm again, and eventually begin to enjoy the new rule, seeing what things they can stack atop the ever-growing pile of clothing that is Kimiko. Once they’ve exhausted their own shed clothing, and the winter coats and hats from the front door, M.M. begins to dig around in Janine’s dress-up bin, looking for tutus and plastic tiaras, and at the end of it even Billy is laughing as she struggles into an old scuba mask they found in the garage.

M.M. – still in his boxers – agrees to host the next night, but Frenchie insists, “No, _mon ami_ , we lost. We will host. If you don’t mind coming down to our apartment in the city… the elevator is broken, you will have to take the stairs.”

And surprisingly no one seems to mind. They want to see where Frenchie is living these days, what he’s up to, what his life looks like. They all secretly also want to count the number of beds in that apartment.

It takes a while for him to help Kimiko out of all her borrowed clothes, redistributing them to their proper owners and then heading back out the door empty-handed, his gift vodka completely depleted. They take the subway home, walking in comfortable silence as she signs animatedly to him about the night she has had. He signs back, his lips whispering the words along with his hands, just in case he is getting it wrong – so she will know what he means.

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” he laughs as they turn the key to the tiny two-bedroom they share overlooking the park where the two of them spend nights just gazing at stares after he gets home from class. “But you will need to practice for next month. My God, _mon coeur_ , you are not good at poker.”

She grins, as she watches him begin to settle into their life again, setting his wallet and keys on the counter and throwing himself down full-force on the couch to flip though nature documentaries that don’t hold his interest half as much these days without the aid of drugs. Quietly, she pads to her bedroom in sock feet, digging in the nightstand before returning and offering her treasure to him.

“More, already?” he chuckles, sitting up straighter to make room for her on the couch and opening the pack of playing cards she has handed him. “When I said ‘practice’ I did not mean-“

But she cuts him off, his voice trailing to silence as her frantic hands pick up her half of the conversation.

With a shrug, he concedes, deals them each a hand.

He loses.

Quickly.

“You are better than I thought,” he chuckles, reaching across to where she has left her coat on the back of one of their armchairs, ready to shrug into it.

She shakes her head, tugging at the hem of his shirt.

“Yeah?” he asks, lifting it over his head and watching her eyes travel down his chest. He is no stranger to being looked at in this way. He is not shy about these things – hasn’t always been able to afford being shy, quite literally – but it is new to see that hungry look on her face – it is new and… arousing.

He deals again.

Loses again.

“I am beginning to think I am being hustled,” he chuckles, taking off a sock and waving it suggestively at her with a wiggle of his eyebrows, twirling it around before tossing it over his shoulder.

“ _Not hustled, just tested_ ,” she signs.

He deals again.

Loses again.

Reaches for another sock.

Her hands stop him, her eyes drawn to the buckle on his belt. She nods over his shoulder to his bedroom.

“Okay,” he says, keeping his voice steady, trying to not startle himself awake from this dream. “Yeah, okay. But you have to lose a few rounds as well.”

She grins, signing back, “ _Don’t worry, I plan to_.”


End file.
